The number of automakers trying to crack the code to get Millennials to give a shit about cars grows with every major auto show and now Volkswagen has sunk to new lows with the Apple-aping name of the special edition iBeetle. It's a car built around a smartphone.
Being shown in Shanghai, the iBeetle features an iPhone docking station and a devoted app to control things like Spotify, an app that shows diagnostics like oil temperature and other things traditional gauges used to tell you, an app to send e-postcards from your iBeetle and “Milestones,” an app that gives you special stickers when you’ve completed certain tasks in your iBeetle.
While it tries to be all futuristic inside, it’s still a new Beetle on the outside and it gets stuff like those fantastic retro wheels and doesn’t appear to be covered in silly special edition stickers.
VW insists this edition of the Beetle is a marriage of two icons: the Beetle and the iPhone. Yeesh. If it didn’t have such a cringe-worthy name and press release, I might respect it a little.